If This Is For Real Men, Pass The Quiche

HONG KONG — The drunken Australian at the bar kept talking about how this was Hong Kong`s equivalent of the Super Bowl, except the players here were real men.

He was parroting the propaganda of his British cousins who never miss the chance to belittle American football players for wearing pads and helmets.

``No sissies here, mate,`` he said. ``Not in rugby. This is a real man`s game.``

For two days last weekend, the ``real men`` of 24 countries gathered in shorts and long-sleeve shirts at Hong Kong`s Government Stadium for the 10th annual ``Invitation Sevens Tournament.``

``The Magnificent Sevens,`` as Hong Kong headline writers like to call it, is an annual playoff among the best seven-on-a-side rugby teams in the world.

Rugby, for those unfamiliar with the ``real man`s`` game, usually is played with 15 players on a team. It takes the basic objectives of American football and creates an organized riot by mixing in street fighting, break dancing and Greco-Roman wrestling.

That seemingly would be enough action for any sports fan, but someone discovered the game could be speeded up by cutting the size of the squads to seven. Hence the birth of ``Rugby Sevens.``

In Rugby Sevens, the fleet-footed street fighters and break dancers become the stars while the role of the giant Greco-Roman wrestlers is downplayed. At least in American football, the linemen can be seen opening holes for running backs or protecting the passer.

In Rugby Sevens, the prime role of the Greco-Roman wrestlers is to hug each other in a big circle called a scrum to hide the ball for a few seconds when the street fighters and break dancers get tired.

The players get tired because there aren`t any timeouts in rugby. Well, normally not. There was one ``brief`` timeout in the second half of Sunday`s championship game when a player stopped to change his shorts in the middle of the field in front of 23,000 fans and a live television audience.

Officially, though, Rugby Sevens is played in two 10-minute halves of running time. Halftime lasts only as long as it takes the two teams to walk to the middle of the field and change directions--no going to the locker rooms or sidelines for these ``real men.``

There isn`t much of a break between games, either. This year`s tournament, the 10th annual Rugby Sevens, featured 46 games with nonstop action from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. last Saturday and Sunday.

The tournament, like many things in Asia, is a remnant of British colonialism. That explains why places like Fiji, Western Somoa, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Malaysia have rugby teams.

And it explains why, in a city where 98 percent of the population is Chinese, there were only a few hundred Chinese in the stands.

The English-language newspapers may have touted the tournament as ``Hong Kong`s biggest outdoor sporting spectacle`` and written that ``all roads lead to Government Stadium,`` but it would have been hard to prove in the Chinese community.

If the Rugby Sevens was a super bowl, it clearly was a colonial super bowl.

Still, the tournament is an important event here. Hotels were booked solid. Police rerouted traffic around the stadium. And the bars of Wanchai that Suzy Wong once made famous were crowded with revelers all weekend.

The winners on the field and in the unofficial barroom drinking contest were the Australians. Their team, the Wallabies, routed a squad of Scottish players called the Public School Wanderers to take the championship for the third time in four years.

Last year, the Australians were eliminated when they lost a coin toss after a tie with Canada. That was particularly galling to the Australians because the eventual winners were the men from Fiji.

Fiji had been expected to challenge the Australians again this year, but a surprising upset by Western Somoa kept them out of the semifinals.

The headlines the day after the tournament boasted: ``Sevens heaven for Wallabies`` and ``Aussies restore lost pride.`` None of the stories explained why ``real men`` would lose their pride in defeat, but maybe it had something to do with the uniforms the teams wear off the field.

The Wallabies left Hong Kong Monday wearing smart green blazers with yellow kangaroos on the breast pockets. The men from Fiji wore simple blue blazers and the knee-length skirts that are native to their island.